The Western Fault Lines by Sohail Parwaz

Pakistan Army is the world's only non-ethnic army having no discrimination whatsoever, as far as recruiting the soldiers is concerned. Its a different thing that the inclination of people from different areas to join the forces varies from region to race and for that blaming the army or branding it as a Punjabi dominated army is very unfair. It becomes more painful when some very learned writers from the west make attempts to destroy the facts and defacing the history for some ulterior motives or vested interests.

The record must be kept straight that the Punjabi plainsmen never carried out any adventure to invade Pushtun tribal areas. It was rather the British army which made such adventurous attempts and the Punjabis, like Hindus, Sikhs, Marhatas, Rajputs and Jats from the sub-continent were part of this invading force. It is well known fact that in 1842, when the British army was fighting the war of their survival, the Afghan freedom fighter Akbar khan, while leading the revolutionaries, allowed only one survivor of the mixed Indian British/ Indian origin to revert to Jalalabad Fort to narrate the account of havoc the warriors played with rest of his 28,500 colleagues. That solitary survivor on a stumbling pony was some British field officer and not a Punjabi. The history of this region has always seen the ‘Lashkars' (armies) coming down from the west and ruling India but never ever saw someone leading the upward invasions, so if someone suggests that,  Pushtuns living in the mountainous borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan have fought to keep out invading Punjabi plainsmen, is certainly mutilating the history and that too would also be a bit exaggerated if it is believed that the British defeated the Pushtuns in 1847 and pushed them back up to Khyber Pass. As a matter of fact they couldn't make any headway hence contentedly accept that as the international border.

However whatever the case may be, whether it was a British win or an Afghan victory, as an ultimate outcome the borders were marked and defined. A piece of land is always snatched with force and not demanded or requested; at least this is what history explains. Where there were Persian, Roman or Ottoman empires once, are now different entities existing on the world map. If ethnicity has to be reckoned as the fault line then we must feel shiver running through our spine to know that the whole world is hanging on a number of fault lines from Yugoslavia to Yemen and Pretoria to Pakistan. This is an established fact that what Pakistan army is doing in the tribal areas or Swat is in no way possible for any other force to do under such adverse circumstances.  The Americans have tasted it in Vietnam and in the recent past in Afghanistan, as well as Iraq but unfortunately it seems to be proved again that ‘We have learnt from the history that we haven't learnt anything'. If we really want peace to prevail in this region then we must trust Pakistan to deal the issue its own way. It looks very unfair when on one side Pakistan is demanded to take punitive action against the extremists while on the other hand when Pakistan deals with them whole heartedly then a section of responsible western media purposely comes out with one or the other nervous breaking or breath taking issue to divert Pakistan's attention from the real issue or raise some new controversy to keep it on its toes.

It should also be very clear that Pashtun and Pathan are two different ethnicities if their locations are taken into account however by blood they are one and the same thing. There are large number of Kakazais, Yousafzais, Tareens, Syeds, Ghaznavis, Ghoris, Orazais and large number of other tribes who are settled in Punjab and elsewhere in Pakistan since centuries. Despite the fact that they speak Punjabi language they can't deny or disown their origin, so principally its not the fault line, rather the earth plate, on which Punjabi or Pushtuns are living.

As earlier said that Pakistan army is the only non-ethnic army where a frontier force regiment's battalion is commanded by a Punjabi and a Punjab regiment unit is given under the supervision of some Pashtun or same in case of Sindh or Baloch regiments and vice versa. The interesting thing is that most of the regimental centres are in the frontier province including the Punjab centre while Sindh regiment centre is in Sindh. Soon after the partition there was a time when the army was dominated by the Punjabi soldiers but it wasn't due to some deliberate attempts. In fact if we look back at the statistics of pre-partition era then that dominance was maintained even during the Second World War and that was due to their majority. Even after the partition it were only the Pushtuns or Punjabis who willingly joined the forces while the Sindhis or the Balochis showed disinterest in serving the forces. However with the passage of time the things changed and through certain relaxations and incentives the remaining provinces also joined the forces.

Pakistan army maintains irrefutable facts and figures which one must consult before hypothesising some situation. The army has revolutionised its clan and things are looked at with a moderate and progressive perspective. So is in the case of recruitment and enrolling. If we look back at last ten years state then it would be encouraging to know that Pak army's 10 years program to revise the composition is reaping some reasonable fruits. Due to Pak army's involvement in Kashmir and the Northern areas the people from these two areas are getting preference. The army which is blamed to be a Punjabi army had 71% Punjabis in 2001 and just in 6 years the figures have drastically come down to 57%. The army is determined to bring it further down to 54% and with the 61% population of Pakistan it is believed that the Punjab deserves to have that much share? On the other hand the Balochis who had no representation until 2001 in the army are now almost 3.2% of the total. As far as the theory of disrespecting the formal autonomous status of "Federally Administered Tribal Areas" (FATA) by the Bush administration and the killing and displacing of the Pushtuns as a result is concerned well that can be agreed however that should not be exploited mischievously by making it an ethnic issue.

The world believes that a stronger Pakistan is in world's interest and to make Pakistan stronger it can be supported by killing the issues rather than putting hurdles in its way. We must remember that forcefully pushing Pakistan to live on any fault line means attempts to make the earth plate moves and we all know that what happens when the earth plates move.